Archive for the Minis Category

You know, loyal readers, I’m always snappin’ on people like Charles M. Blow (here, for instance) for saying that the existence of casual sex negates the sacred human values of trust, caring and integrity. Yes, this op-ed is old, but it’s still as hilarious as ever! He phoned up a university professor to help him understand the “strange phenomenon” of hooking up, which he also says is a “strange culture”! Charles M. Blow could learn a lot about the topsy-turvy new world of sex by reading this blog. But what can we learn from him? What about those times when Charles M. Blow is right — when the simple hookup that you undertook with an attitude of devil-may-care insouciance comes back to bite you in the ass, stirring up primal emotions and feelings, causing your façade of carefree sophistication to tumble all around you like a flimsy house of cards? What will you do when you find that you’ve unconscionably trifled with the finer feelings and elevated sentiments of one of God’s fellow creatures, luring him to perdition and grief with your sensual wiles, you temptress?

Charles M. Blow doesn’t actually say that will happen; he just says that hooking up “isn’t a good way to find a spouse.” But today’s story proves that it can happen. It’s hardly fair, is it? All you were trying to do was spread some joy in this cold and bitter world. But just look at Margaret’s experience.

Margaret wrote in to us a few months ago, about a relatively trouble-free fling she had with a freshman at her university. But now, things have gotten more complicated. Margaret has two friends who are also friends with each other. Of the two, she has a big crush on “Rupert.” He’s “really really sweet but also kind of sarcastic and funny, we have the same interests, he loves books and films and tea, and when I talk to him I end up forgetting my troubles.” Good grief. This is right on the verge of being twee. He studies art, and before that “he studied Animal Biology, which is awesome because I was [once] a science geek, and also, he worked in a zoo! Which sounds cool even if it actually was just shoveling poop all day.”

Meanwhile, “Gerald” has a big crush on her. But as far as she’s concerned, he’s just a friend, and with good reason. He’s a few years younger than Rupert, and lacks some of his worldly sophistication. They both study the same subject, which “can get annoying because we both have really strong opposing viewpoints and Gerald likes to debate these a lot, and I am kind of like, ‘can we just shut up and watch Indiana Jones please!'”

Thus, a classic love triangle. Then one night a couple of weeks ago, all three of them were hanging out. “I got very very drunk on cheap scotch.” Somehow she ended up alone with Gerald. They “were messing around and somehow this led to some kissing. Which then led to him leading me to his room, and then we had sex.” I didn’t get a report on whether it was fun or not, because Margaret claims the sex “wasn’t the point.” She was more eager to point out that she was wearing the very same dress she had on when she first encountered “Fresher” in the previous story. “It is not low-cut and it’s quite loose and… like a big t-shirt with pretty flowers on the neckline. Are big t-shirts sexy?” Let the people be the judge; I convinced her to send me a photo.

White dress

In the e-mail she originally sent to me, Margaret continued as follows: “Sleeping with Gerald was quite a retarded thing to do… [but] I actually consider him quite a good friend, so it’s not the most terrible thing that’s ever happened that we slept together, it’s not awkward or anything between us.”

However, a week passed before Margaret got around to sending me pictures of the dress. During that time, the situation deteriorated. She and Gerald had a serious talk: “It turns out that Gerald actually really likes me quite a lot. For me, the situation was like, ‘haha, I got drunk and slept with this guy, that was a bit silly, seeing as I like his friend,’ but now everything is awkward and horrible and I can’t do anything with Rupert because it would make Gerald cry. Gerald chose to wait ’til a few days after we had sex to tell me this as well, if I knew before, I clearly wouldn’t have slept with him (I don’t think).”

“And now that he has told me, I’m really aware of how I act around Rupert when Gerald’s there, trying not to be too flirty, and also I am really aware of how I act around Gerald, like I’m trying to be normal but I don’t want to be too nice in case he thinks that I secretly love him, but not too nasty because it’s not his fault that he is a little bit in love with me, and I still want to be his friend…. Argh! I think this has turned into a clothes that got me laid FAIL. Well, win in the sense that I did get laid, fail in the sense that my life is now hideously dramatic because of it.”

That sounds really awkward. It’s too late to do anything about it now, so let’s try to figure out what it is about this dress.

Winning outfit

Above is the full outfit, including brown tights, brown cardigan, gold belt and gold flats. Margaret finally concludes that “I think I’ve figured out the secret of the magic dress: You can see the whole of my legs. It is like I am not even wearing a skirt.” What do you guys think?

Today, part II in the saga of “Georgiana,” whom we last saw cavorting with her boss in a pair of thigh-high suede boots. A year or two later, she was single and extending her undergraduate education by taking classes at Columbia.

Georgiana says this story is one of gratification “oddly deferred.” It began with a flirtation between her and a guy in her 19th Century American Lit class. She was 30 or 31, and most of her fellow students were significantly younger than her, but “Abraham” was close to her age. She thought he was hot, and he became her smoking-break partner, so they spent some time each week flirting and joking around. Don’t you envy smokers all that rapport they get to have with each other? The non-smokers were probably sitting in the classroom, having a stilted conversation with the professor about William Dean Howells, while these two were out maximizing their break time.

For months, she and Abraham were content to remain break buddies. (She says he was “crazy” and had a whole fucked-up life, which is probably why she didn’t see him as boyfriend material.) Finally, this changed on the last day of the semester. Everyone had decided to go out and celebrate after class ended, and since it met in the evening, they walked directly from school to the West End bar. Georgiana and Abraham ended up walking together; the rest of the class got a head start, probably because of the smoking.

By the way, she was wearing a gray wife-beater, a twill miniskirt, and Frye leather motorcycle boots, all of which were really old and ratty.

Gray tank top

Herringbone miniskirt

Frye motorcycle boots

As they were happily walking along, “the heavens opened” and rain started pouring down. They retreated into an alcove on the Columbia campus to wait it out. “So we start making out.” They were totally having fun necking in this alcove, but finally the rain let up and it was time to leave and head over to the bar. When they got there, it was “completely obvious” what they had been up to from their dishevelled appearance. They did their best to seem normal (the professor was there), but in between drinks they kept dashing off to fool around by the phone in the back. Obviously, they were drinking shots of tequila and Wild Turkey, which they don’t call “the crazy bird” for nothing.

Then, the unthinkable happened: The West End ran out of tequila and Wild Turkey. Georgiana says this isn’t because they drank it all, but rather that supplies were already running low. It was clearly time to go to another bar. By the time they got there, their making out had escalated to such a degree that “if we could be having sex in the bar, we would have.” I pointed out that if they were gay dudes in a gay bar, they could have done this! She says that actually, they sort of tried to — the bar had an unusually clean and spacious bathroom — but the bouncer yelled at them not to be doing that.

Surprisingly, they didn’t get kicked out, but were allowed to roam free in the bar. Shortly afterward, Abraham decided she was wearing too many clothes, “so he bends down and pulls down my underpants.” This garnered them a shocked look from a fellow patron who was “terribly offended that this person had removed my underwear within six inches of her.” Georgiana’s tone of voice makes this reaction sound totally unreasonable.

Maybe Georiana and Abraham decided they concluded that they weren’t wanted in the bar, or maybe it just got too stuffy in there, but at this point they took their show outside. They were free of the underwear’s repressive influence, and all things were permissible! He kneeled down in front of her and they basically started doing full-on cunnilingus with her leaned up against a dry cleaner’s. I’ve never lived in New York, so I don’t know if this kind of thing still goes on there. Is this urban chaos what people mean when they talkabout people missing “the old New York”?

At last, it was time to get in Abraham’s car and go back to his apartment. You know, people talk a lot of shit about driving drunk, but when you’re going home with someone at the end of a night, it’s really useful. You can complete the process in a fluid series of steps and you don’t have to deal with someone having second thoughts or whatever while you’re waiting for a cab, all like “I don’t know, I have a Hot Yoga class tomorrow morning at 8, maybe I’d better get to sleep.” Also, you don’t have to be waking up at 2:00 in the afternoon and finding out that your car is halfway across town with like 7,000 parking tickets. Abraham was clearly a chivalrous fellow, and did a great job of getting her home safely. Maybe there should be some sort of permit available for skilled drunk drivers like him. I want one too.

That night, they had “lots of oral sex” but no plain old intercourse. The next day they had lots of phone sex, but she told him she didn’t want to date because “you’re too fucked up for me to be with.” Months passed, and she didn’t see him. Finally, he called her on Thanksgiving day and asked what she was up to. Wanting to find out what she had missed the first time, she invited him over. Another happy ending: “He was really good in bed.”